Page 183 of A Flame of the Phoenix

She didn’t allow him to feed on her fear, and Tarly found her bravery both admirable and tragic.

Malin lifted himself from the throne as if his own weight were a burden. There was a madness about the way he moved. Slow, assessing, one wrong trigger away from doing something irreversible.

Tarly didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t fight this many fae and dark fae—they lined the entire hall. He didn’t have his bow. But watching Malin approach Marlowe, a venomous snake primed for a gentle doe, Tarly could hardly stand the sickness tightening in his stomach at being so helpless.

“The potions,” Malin said, low with an ominous chill, “are useless!” His voice was elevated, and a small bottle he’d been carrying shattered to the ground, spilling the crimson liquid at Marlowe’s feet.

“They affect everyone differently?—”

Marlowe choked with the hand Malin wrapped around her throat. Jakon turned savage, but he was no match for even one fae, never mind the three that surrounded him.

“I’ll fucking kill you!” Jakon snarled—a sound so unlike his usual nature.

“Tell me,Oracle—in fact,show memy reign at the end of this war.”

His pressure around her neck wasn’t enough to keep her from talking.

“It doesn’t—” She struggled for breath. “It doesn’t exist.”

Malin pushed her with a growl of outrage, and Marlowe sprawled on the floor. Tarly jerked again. His teeth hadn’t unclenched since he’d entered the room, and his anger was growing palpable.

“You either show it to me, or I have no more use for you.”

“Please!” Jakon yelled. “She’s done everything you ask. She can’t write the future!”

Gods,it was agony to hear his desperate pleas for his wife.

“You can kill me,” Marlowe said—a cold, hushed breath of acceptance. “It won’t change a thing. It will not stop the wrath of the Phoenix that’s coming for you.”

Malin’s eyes flared wide, crazed. He dipped into his pocket and produced another vial of Phoenix Blood, downing the contents in a single swallow.

“So I kill her first,” Malin pondered, trying desperately, though he stayed chillingly calm, to calculate a way out of the inevitable future Marlowe foretold.

“You are nothing compared to her,” Marlowe said.

Then she cried out from no physical interference. Malin was attacking her mind.

“Stop!” Jakon cried—a broken sound.

“She’s telling you everything—you don’t need to do that!” Tarly growled.

He shot a look at Izaiah as if he might be able to intervene, but while his expression was masterfully composed in steel, his eyes blazed at the display, and Tarly thought he might break.

“You’ll only seal the future she taunts you with if you kill her,” Izaiah warned.

Marlowe hardly made a sound, but her body was tense with invisible pain, and her glass eyes were fixed on the celling.

Tarly’s chest was pounding. Every movement in this room balanced on a ledge of no return.

Malin contemplated with a furious stare on Marlowe, then he let her go. Tarly’s breath fell out of him when Marlowe’s body slumped, released from the torture and mercifully still alive.

Marlowe slowly peeled herself up, braced on her hands as she caught her breath. The human shifted her head back, locking eyes with Jakon, and it was then Tarly felt the world stand still. He’d never seen such ghostly, helpless horror overcome a personas he did now as he followed her line of sight to Jakon. He’d gone so pale with the declaration that appeared on Marlowe’s lips.

Malin crouched before her. “Your mind is filled with too many reels for me to know what is true, so show me the path I win.”

Marlowelaughed.A few breathy sounds of mockery as she shook her head and then turned it to the king.

“Step into my mind, and I’ll show you,” she said in a voice so unwavering despite the monster she started into the face of. “Here—you win. The kingdom is yours.”

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